The present invention relates to a molded harvester reel finger or tine for mounting on a reel bat tube that is collapsible in length, making the long individual bat tubes easier to service, easier to assemble, easier to ship and stronger. The molded fingers or tines are each mountable on the tubes with a single fastener to hold the reel tine or finger easily and securely for harvesting grain.
Clamp on reel tines or fingers are shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,613,347. The tine hub forms a hook that goes around a reel tube and extends more than 180xc2x0 around the tube. The tine or finger is held by snap in lugs.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,066,470 shows a split clamp rake tooth that has a clamp bolt for tightening the clamp onto a tube. A U-shaped saddle bolted to a bat blade is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 4,901,511. This also requires a cross bolt on the opposite side of the reel bat from the tine. U.S. Pat. No. 5,595,052 also shows a tine with a split hub to clamp the tine in place. Split hubs are not easy to form and thus are more expensive and installation on the reel bats is time consuming.
In the prior art, various types of reel constructions have been used for harvesting equipment, such as combines, and the bat tubes that are used for forming the reels on such implements are long, making the tubes hard to ship, and difficult to assemble. There are multi-section bats which, while reducing the length, are complex and relatively difficult to assemble. A reel is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,459,797. U.S. Pat. No. 3,796,030 shows essentially the same type of construction where reel bats are held together with a member that clamps onto the bats with a bearing journal between them. The formed metal bat sections are joined also by overlapping the ends and bolting them together.
However, it is desirable to have a tubular support bat since tubes are easily obtained and lightweight and also such tubes are easy to use with the tines that attach to the tubes as disclosed herein.
Other molded tines are made with imbedded or molded in place attaching bolts such as that shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,151,436. A typical bolt-on saddle-shaped member is with a molded end tine is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,553,950.
The present disclosure, in one aspect, shows a tine or finger for a tubular reel bat that is mounted with a single fastener that secures a hub on the finger to the tube. The tine or finger is made in one piece with a hub at one end with a post that also is formed unitarily in place, and when assembled to a tube extends through an opening into the interior of the tube. A single screw or other fastener extends into an opening on the opposite side of the tube and secures the tine post to lock the tine securely to the reel bat tube.
Another aspect of the invention is to provide multi-sectioned support bat tubes so that the bat tubes can be broken down into sections that are shippable by normal commercial shippers, and which can be assembled quite easily to form the reel. The tube sections are joined with shaft sections that also provide for bearing supports at the spiders used on the reel for holding the bats in position.
The tines of the present invention preferably may be molded and are easily used. The hubs are made so that they will tightly engage the tube on which they are mounted to reduce the likelihood of twisting or working loose. The head of the single fastener, as shown a screw, that is utilized can be drawn into a countersunk recess on the opposite side of the tube from the direction of the extension of the tine, so that there are no rough edges to catch straw or the like.
The tine or finger has a hub that has an interior surface that seats on the bat tube and which has a slightly smaller radius than the radius of the tube on which it is mounted so that the hub sides tend to spread as the tine is installed to ensure a secure mounting.